Tree leaves shade the Ragdale Ring on the Ragdale Foundation campus Thursday, June 23, 2016, in Lake Forest. The temporary art piece and venue will hold one performance each in June, July and August. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

There's something about a ring, the kind that gathers people in a circle. From Stonehenge to the layered-stone "council rings" of landscape architect Jens Jensen, circular open-air structures have long liberated us from the straight lines of everyday life and created places for shared experience. Forget the cacophony of the proverbial three-ring circus. A ring, well-done, can form a serene respite from the daily grind.

A playful new variation on this theme has just been built about 30 miles north of the Loop, amid the impressive estates of Lake Forest. Called "Rounds" and colored mint green, it resembles an inchworm that's grown exponentially in size. You find it at the Ragdale Foundation, the home for visiting artists set on the former country estate of early 20th century Chicago architect Howard Van Doren Shaw.

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"Rounds" is at once architecture, landscape architecture, sculpture, a piece of outdoor furniture and a theater in the round. On Thursday, weather permitting, it will host its first public performance, a program featuring the Ruth Page Civic Ballet and dancers from Chicago and Cuba. That's a special opportunity because the grounds of Ragdale are typically closed to the public.

My two cents? Go. Ragdale, which this year is celebrating its 40th anniversary as an artists' community, is a choice spot for a midsummer night's entertainment. And "Rounds" engages Shaw's Arts and Crafts architecture with an appealing mix of harmony and counterpoint. It will be fascinating to see how this digital-age delight works (or doesn't) as a performance space.

Designed by Greg Corso and Molly Hunker, architecture professors at Syracuse University who formerly taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the temporary installation won the fourth annual "Ragdale Ring" competition. The contest challenges entrants to update the concept of Shaw's original ring, an open-air theater on the estate. Previous winners resembled band shells and stages. In this year's competition, sponsored by Chicago architect Adrian Smith, "Rounds" discarded that convention in a quest to synthesize stage and seating, actors and arena.

Seventy feet in diameter, the piece consists of 48 wedges, each supported by an inner grid of thin plywood. Several of the wedges arch upward, to varying heights and for varying functions. The small ones are supposed to provide spectators with a place to sit or lean. Those of medium size create gateways that lead to and from the ring. The biggest arch frames an area for a stage. The wedges are covered in rubberized stucco and that mint green paint, giving "Rounds" a pleasingly seamless look and providing structural support in the bargain.

While the outcome appears effortless, constructing it was a major production. The wizardry of digital fabrication enabled the architects to make scores of pieces with multiple curves. A construction crane was required to put the tops of the arches in place. The architects and engineers from Arup also had to account for the possibility that high winds could turn the arches into sails that would be lifted by the breeze and rip "Rounds" apart.

"I'm glad to hear it's still standing up," Corso said after heavy winds whipped through the Chicago area two weeks ago.

To his and Hunker's credit, "Rounds" works on aesthetic as well as technical grounds. It's a charmingly sinuous object, as innocent as a child's doodle. Yet it also shows promise as a shaper of space, one that is laudably flexible. You can imagine a crowd gathered inside the ring on blankets and lawn chairs, watching a performance under the main arch. Yet you can foresee actors staging a show in the middle of the ring or playing scenes while standing atop it.

I'm mixed on the piece's light-green color. The first images of "Rounds" that circulated on the internet showed the piece covered in white primer paint. That look created a compelling contrast between the natural and the man-made, evoking Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. But the architects went ahead with their plan for the green finish coat, hoping to achieve a low-contrast look that would be naturalistic and avoid the maintenance problem of mud caked on a white surface. It's not bad. Perhaps it will grow on you.

To be sure, the idea of using enclosures to form outdoor rooms, as well as surfaces on which people can sit, is not new. The American sculptor Orly Genger, who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has formed such enclosures with layers of hand-knotted nautical rope covered in paint. Yet "Rounds" brings a fresh architectural dimension to the concept. Now let's see whether the functional needs of live theater detract from the piece's formal appeal or enhance its ability to make an intimate sense of place.

Ragdale is at 1260 North Green Bay Road in Lake Forest. Tickets for the performance at 7 p.m. Thursday are $20 each, $15 for students and seniors. Patrons can only be dropped off at Ragdale. Drivers should park at the Oakwood/Deerpath lot in downtown Lake Forest and take a shuttle to Ragdale.